As soon as the war was over, she came to America. “I didn’t want to see frightened faces anymore.… My first husband was terribly rich—he came from Chicago. He had a tiny little airplane—he was very strange, that man—he wanted to fly everywhere. Even to horse races. He decided to fly to Rio de Janeiro. We flew from Chicago to Tennessee, from Tennessee to Florida, from Florida to the Bahamas. I wanted never to be frightened again, and here I was in this little tiny airplane with this man who wanted to be frightened all the time. It gave him pleasure! My God. When we flew over the jungle, I decided that was the end. In Rio, I left him. Also, he was dull.”
If she was so afraid of danger—Avram had asked her—why had she married Allan? Allan was her second husband, and it was while she was married to him that Avram had met her. Allan was a professional deep-sea diver, a scuba expert, with very little money.
“He never asked me to go diving with him,” Annetje said, wide-eyed. “I did not realize I would be frightened for him.” She had left him when he gave her an ultimatum, to calm down and be reasonable or go away. He had not expected her to go away.
She had married a third time, while visiting friends in Switzerland. She told Avram what had happened, meeting him one day on Lexington Avenue, both of them shopping; they lived two blocks apart, they discovered. Avram was recently divorced—from his second wife.
“I did not want to get married again,” Annetje said, brushing at the incredibly blond hair that fell across the left side of her forehead. “He insisted. He is very, very sophisticated. He said we would drive each other mad if we did not marry. He said, married, we would love each other less, we would have a little peace.”
Her third husband, a cadaverous six-feet-five-inch semiserious novelist from Montana, as handsome as Gary Cooper, as serious a drinker as Scott Fitzgerald, wrote for the movies between novels, squandering and gambling away his enormous salary. Annetje was his fourth wife. Avram knew the man slightly—John Herbert Thompson his name was. John Herbert had what seemed to Avram a peculiarly touching quality of emotional elegance; he loved and suffered with a singleness of purpose that reminded Avram of the curved, thin legs of French antiques.
One of Avram’s most intense experiences had involved John Herbert—Avram had fallen briefly, confusedly in love with an Italian poetess who was at that time loved by John Herbert. The Italian poetess had been pessimistic, very tall and bony for an Italian woman; her usual expression had been one of somber, dark-eyed, hopeless intuition. She had taken Avram as a lover and discarded John Herbert, because, she said, Avram’s deadness, his endless calculations, were more needful than John Herbert’s despair. “I want a man who cannot live without me,” she had said. “When I love, I am a capitalist. When I love, I own.” At other times, she was, of course, a Communist.
Avram had always admired John Herbert. “I am almost a C.P.A. really, in spirit, by comparison,” he had said to Annetje when she told him of her marriage. “There is a spiritual grandeur about great drinkers. Me, I am prudent. Always, involuntarily, at bottom, prudent.”
But, he thought, Annetje had again married strangely. John Herbert was mentally and physically adventurous. He had had two nervous breakdowns, brought on by too much thinking, by exhaustion, and like many American writers afflicted with what Avram called “a virility syndrome”—he wanted to be a perfect man—he pursued farfetched sports, skydiving for one, and had once gone on a four-month expedition in the Andes and discovered a tribe that used hallucinogenic sweet potatoes as a staple of diet. Yet Avram thought there was style in the marriage of a man of such emotional elegance to a temperamental coward like Annetje. Annetje would make John Herbert want to live. She would interpose her beauty between John Herbert and his passionate carelessness.
“Where is John Herbert?” Avram asked now on the telephone.
“He has left me,” Annetje said. “I told him to get out. It was the drug. He did not want to give me any sympathy. I do not deserve sympathy, but he is my husband, the bastard. Besides, I think he has a girl. I do not care. My God, my God. This is awful. They should put me on TV. The world should see me like this. No one would ever take LSD again. Ha-ha. Ha. Listen, you live so close, I want to see someone. My friends hate me. I tell you, I am paranoid. Listen, can you come over. The walls here are behaving strangely. I should throw myself out the window.”
“Annetje!”
“No, I won’t throw myself out the window. The windows have a very evil look. I am being persuasive. John Herbert says this is what I do. I am unfair.”
Avram felt a surge of complicity with John Herbert. Annetje sounded to him like someone enjoying a minor collapse, not someone who needed immediate help. But could he take that chance?
In New York, to be without compassion was to become an outcast. Avram did not know of any circle except among lawyers, perhaps (and even then he wasn’t certain), where an unwillingness to sympathize was not cause for exile. Avram had often said that intelligence was less in demand in New York than a feeling heart.
On the other hand, he was afraid of Louise. She was a rather rigid person. Within bounds, she could be flexible, but the bounds were very narrow. She was a Republican, a heavy drinker, and once slighted, she never forgot. If he left to go to Annetje, she would feel slighted; she was unyielding in points of honor. No matter how carefully he argued that he had an ethical obligation to go to Annetje, Louise would simply feel he preferred Annetje to her. If he lied and said Annetje was a very close friend, Louise would wonder, out loud—Louise never held anything back—why he had never introduced Louise to her. Louise would say, “You think I’m too dull for your interesting friends.”
Avram leaped toward a compromise. “I have company,” he said to Annetje, and turned his head to give Louise a warm smile. She returned a suspicious look; she sensed a slight in the air.
“Oh,” Annetje said quickly, “I am terrible, I have interrupted you, I am very sorry, go, go at once, I will be all right, I am fine, I am very strong, I—”
“No, no. Listen to me. Why don’t you join us? Please. Let me take you to dinner. Please?”
“I couldn’t. I am going mad. I—”
“Please. I want you to join us.” Avram saw that Louise was looking very angry.
Annetje said, “I can’t. I am afraid. I cannot leave my apartment. I have not left for five days. I do not know what is outside my door.”
“I will come and fetch you,” Avram said. He put his hand over the receiver and said to Louise and Ulrich, “It’s only two blocks. It will only take a moment.”
Louise closed her eyes and said, with eyes closed, “Don’t worry about us. Don’t let us interfere.”
God, Avram thought, why am I such a coward?
“I look so terrible,” Annetje said.
“So do we. I’ll be there in three minutes,” Avram said, and hung up.
He leaned against the wall near the telephone table and smiled still more warmly at Louise. Louise’s pan-shaped face was rigid. Her hair had been done by some famous man of the scissors but remained undistinguished. She was wearing pearls and a dress Avram assumed was expensive. Dear, rich Louise, Avram thought. He wondered for the fifty thousandth time since he’d met her how her mind worked—she was very family-conscious; she believed in the human personality as produced and trained by certain families. But Avram had never known her to lie, she was rarely or never devious, and she often amused him.
Avram began to talk quickly. “Look, I know this is terrible. Here we are, our first get-together since God knows when, and I want to bring in a stranger. But she’s in trouble. She’s married to quite a good friend of mine”—Avram hoped he would not have to explain that or name the friend; Louise would be furious he had never introduced her to someone as famous as John Herbert—“and he happens to be in California. Stupidly this girl took some LSD and she’s having a bad reaction. I really don’t think she should be alone. Her husband would never forgive me. And you will like her. She’s a fascinating person.
She was married to Langwell Eggles—you know, Chicago?” Avram tried to force a social smile from Louise by tilting his head toward her, catching her glance, and raising his eyebrows to suggest what she do with her mouth.
“Of course, of course,” Ulrich said. Louise has picked a large, handsome German, Avram thought; Avram often thought in sentences. He will turn pasty later in life. He is very gracious. He doesn’t like me.
Louise said, “I think we’d better go.” Her mouth had the twist that Avram knew so well: she felt slighted.
“No, no,” Avram said. “You must stay. I’ve looked forward so to seeing you.” He sighed; he always did, like a stage Jew, when he felt himself forced into duplicity. Listen to me, sounding like a Gentile, said his sigh. He rolled his eyes slightly upward. He said, “I can’t help the girl’s calling. I wish she hadn’t called me. But I can’t leave her in the lurch. Please don’t punish me by leaving. And she’s quite fascinating.”
Louise sat back deeper into her chair; Avram took that for an answer. He darted into the kitchen and fetched a tray, loaded it quickly with bottles of liquor and the ice bucket, talking loudly all the time. “You know how it is in New York? We’re very strongly neighbors in our set. It’s an emotional thing, not geographical; I mean, I don’t know who lives next door to me. But Annetje is a neighbor, I feel. I—” He reentered the living room. “Please don’t blame me. You mustn’t let me down. We owe ourselves this evening together.” He set the tray on the oiled walnut coffee table. “I’ll be gone ten minutes at most, and I’ll bring back this fascinating girl I do really want you to meet. Really.” Avram felt a twinge of conscience; surely charity and affection were equally insulted when one tried to kill two birds with one egocentric stone: not only would Annetje be the equivalent of a floor show and make the evening special and ease this getting acquainted with Ulrich but Louise and Ulrich would protect him from Annetje.
He closed his eyes. He was keeping books, as usual.
He opened his eyes, grabbed a raincoat from the closet, paused to say, “Now please wait for me,” and dashed dramatically out the door.
AVRAM DARTED down the steps of his brownstone with that quick boyishness of his which aroused the sarcasm of so many of the intellectuals who wrote for his magazine.
The street was empty of walkers, lined with parked cars, each dotted with moisture from the half fog, half drizzle that filled the air with tiny drops of light-blurring water—the air had an acrid edge of pollution.
As he loped along the sidewalk, he felt an uplift of spirits. In his life—he was between affairs, and the magazine came out only twice a year—he lately felt a dryness, a dearth of feeling and of interest. The city had lately begun to seem mere walls of brick and glass, channels for soot. But now he looked forward to the evening. He was attempting to help someone; this was an oasis.
How he pitied Annetje for being an acidhead. Avram did not approve of LSD and had never taken any. At a party given a few years before for two men who wanted to raise funds for a quasi-utopian settlement to be based on love and LSD, the men had spoken at length and incoherently of the evils of the games of ambition, of the evils of success and failure—noticeably charmless failures in a roomful of successful people well on the way to being more successful. Since then, Avram had stubbornly held that LSD was a drug for failures without good sense. He was surprised at Annetje. Yes, her marriages did not last, she was growing older, but why the hell didn’t she simply make up her mind to be a better wife? Annetje had charm.
Annetje and John Herbert kept an apartment in a building just off Lexington Avenue, with doormen and elevator men. Annetje was afraid of being raped. Men on the streets did conceive enormous desire for her; Avram had observed it. Once, he had seen her walking down Lexington Avenue, quite frightened, followed by four men, four men dispersed and straggling, and when she crossed the street to greet Avram the four men had halted, like Secret Service agents, and stared while she spoke to Avram, who then walked her to Bloomingdale’s, a guard.
Once, a man—it had been in the papers—had managed somehow to enter her building; he had thrown himself on her in the hallway; she had broken free and run down seven flights of stairs to the lobby. A passing police car had responded to the doorman’s shout. The two policemen found the would-be rapist crouching on the roof, sobbing. He was a forty-five-year-old truckdriver with a record of sexual offenses, most of which, to Avram’s surprise, were for homosexual assault of one kind or another. Annetje had said, “I am very attractive to homosexuals. I don’t remind them of their mother.” Annetje was thin and had that extraordinary coloring, of course, and an astonishing amount of sex appeal. She had said gloomily, “I could tell the minute he grabbed me he was homosexual. I thought, Just my luck, I am going to be raped by a homosexual.”
Poor Annetje. In the end, no man is man enough for a really pretty woman, Avram thought.
He knocked on her door. She did not answer, and Avram began to worry; he was calculating what he must do if she did not answer—call the police, take her to a sanitarium, get in touch with John Herbert—when he heard footsteps. Tiny, frightened footsteps.
“Who is it?” Annetje whispered.
“Avram.”
“Thank God,” she said.
He heard a series of mechanical noises, of clicks and scrapes; she was unlocking the door. Seconds passed; the noises continued.
“There are so many,” she said through the door. “I can’t work them. I’m a prisoner.”
“Take your time. Don’t be upset,” Avram said with patience.
Abruptly the door opened, and there was Annetje. Bedraggled, uncombed, pale inside a tattered sweater and a heavy skirt that hung lopsidedly and was sliding lower on her hips. Annetje was one of those intensely seductive women who dress stylishly for the street and then relax at home inside shapeless old clothes, clothes they’ve perhaps had since college, or their first marriage—mementos of lost years, vanished fashions, and the emotions that went with the fashions.
Annetje was very thin-waisted, with little cushionlike hips and thin, square shoulders, quite broad, and Avram was always aware of the small of her back; her shoulders and her hips were assertive: it was the small of her back which was private and where her vulnerability truly resided. His hands twitched, anxious to touch her there. So frail, he thought. So needful. His eyes began to film over. He caught himself; he bent semimedically to study her eyes to see if the pupils were dilated or anything like that. But that was a mistake. Avram was susceptible to Annetje; the seaside grayness of her eyes jolted his emotions. Bedraggled or not, she sent out a current of high sexual voltage. She suggested to Avram Swedish movies, summer making the Nordics carnal.
“It’s you,” she said, pressing fragile, long-boned arms to her breast. “I didn’t think you would come.” Then, with that violence Avram feared in her, she threw those frail arms around his neck.
Avram’s hands fluttered, then settled helplessly on the small of her back; it felt incredibly tiny; he could feel her life coursing in her. He murmured, “I said I would come,” but he was nearly mindless. He had only enough self-possession to calculate that if he tried to make her it would be shameful—taking advantage. Dull honor, he thought, gently massaging the small of her back: I will probably get an ulcer and die young. He heard himself say, “I said I would be here.” It was a deeper voice than he usually used. He had started, he thought, the mating dance. He wondered if Annetje had ever seen a male unexcited by desire, a male in a more normal state.
“But I am paranoid. I told you I was paranoid. I thought you were just lying to get me off the phone. I thought you were angry that I called.” She flung herself backward, away from him, turned in a half pivot, came to rest with one arm across her chest, gripping her other arm. “Do you have any cigarettes? I’ve been afraid to smoke. I was afraid of setting myself on fire.”
He had his first impulse since her call of genuine sympathy. “Why did you do it? No one should go through such unnecessary �
�” He didn’t know what word to use: agony, discomfort.
“I am a fool,” Annetje said. “I thought it would help me—I wanted to understand John Herbert. There is nothing to understand. That is what I saw. He is a child, a malicious child. I am a child.” She looked at Avram.
Avram thought, She is right. He himself was well into the dry plateau of growing older, that slow one-way advance into the wastes.
“I could have seen it without the drug,” Annetje said with a little laugh. Suddenly she pressed her hand to her mouth. “I mustn’t laugh,” she said between her fingers. “My teeth will fall out.”
The apartment had a stale, nervous smell. Avram commented on it and Annetje said, “I have locked all the windows. Air pollution will get in. Or I will throw myself out. No, I won’t.”
Avram said, “Let’s go. This place isn’t good for you. Get a raincoat.”
“Sit with me a moment,” Annetje said. “Just for a moment. Us alone.” She spoke wheedlingly, almost in a child’s tone. Avram was impressed by her lips—large Dutch lips, delicately flickering; their soft flutter charmed him.
“What happened with John Herbert?” he asked. He followed Annetje into the green-and-white, airless living room.
“I told him to get out, that bastard,” she said. “ ‘Go away,’ I said. He slapped me. He was furious I had taken the LSD. He said I was a pig. Oh, it was very sordid.” She sat down on an innocently moss-green couch, her knees close together, her hands hovering, not quite touching her temples. “It is time to die. It is the one sordid thing I have not done,” she said.
“Why don’t you settle down, Annetje?” Avram said avuncularly.
“Settle down?” Annetje grimaced. “There are quicker ways to die. I cannot stand it. I have had enough of bastards,” she said. “I do not need any more badness from these bastards. I am through with him. Them. Why do they eat you up? They are such babies. They want to be mothered. I am not a mother.” She gave Avram a heated glance of her gray eyes as if to demonstrate in what way she was not motherly. She said, “Why can’t he act like a man? Always, it is I who fail him, he says. I think it is my turn to collapse. Let him take care of me, let him worry about me. Last month he has a binge, two weeks—drinking, women, gambling. He comes home in rags, half beaten, bruises on his face. ‘Help me, Annetje,’ he says. I take him in my arms. I wash his face. I sit up with him all night. The next day he is refreshed, he continues with his binge. He comes home, he has nightmares, I hold his head in my lap all night. His nightmares frighten even me. Even now I am not as bad as he was then. He says he is going out of his head. I get him to the doctor. After two days, he refuses to see the doctor again. He says the doctor is stupid. Very well, let him go out of his head. Good riddance. I don’t care. I am tired. I know I am unreasonable. I have had this drug. I am crazy—I know it. I am paranoid. I tell him he wants to destroy me. I tell him to get out. You know what he does? He goes. But I am glad. I want to be alone.”
Stories in an Almost Classical Mode Page 9